Ice Cream and Amish Brownies

What an amazing last seven days. It was a whirlwind of activity and we can't wait to tell you about it.

We decided to go to a place called North Star Orchards on our P-Day. We had heard that they have tulips that you can cut for a dollar a stem and that there are a ton of them.  Then I was reading on their website and we had missed it.  It was the weekend just two days before and I figured we had missed it.  Mike said, "let's go anyway and just see what they have." And so off we went. At the last minute I decided to grab my cameras.  Up until now I have just been using my phone to take pictures.  I can't tell you how much I have missed my cameras.  I could hardly contain myself.  I just clicked and clicked and it felt so good!

North Star Orchards is a nursery, a store, and orchards of apple trees and lots of blueberry bushes and tulip fields.  We walked through the nursery and we asked the girls if there were anymore tulips.  We were told there were still plenty but that it was getting ready to pour rain.  We ventured out into the tulip field.  There were some great tulips still and so we got some photos.

Down the path there was a beautiful home-I'm sure owned by the owner of North Star, and a really cool barn.  Of course, I couldn't help myself. Click Click. We walked around and enjoyed the coolness of the day.  There was a beekeeper unloading a bunch of beehives.  He was adding 35 hives in the middle of the blueberry patch to make sure the blueberries get pollinated so they people can pick in July!

Those dark clouds were gathering and we got back to the shop just in the nick of time.  The skies opened up and it poured.  We wandered around the shop and found a head of romaine lettuce that was huge, crisp and priced at $1.99 which was cheaper than we have found here.  I grabbed the lettuce and we couldn't help grabbing a couple of treats that are Central New York recipes.  One is called Moon Pie and the other was Apple Cider Cake.

They were pretty tasty. And if it seems like all we do is eat-well. . .   To end our P-Day we ran to a little pizza place to try our very first, authentic New York Style Brick Oven Pizza.  Okay!  We loved it!  We just love pizza and this one did not disappoint!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were filled with a Mission Tour/Zone Conference.  We had the opportunity to have Elder Kelly Johnson and his wife, Sister Terry Johnson as our visiting general authority.  He is in the Area Presidency and he is a masterful teacher.  If you remember the story at General Conference about the daughter who set the timer on the microwave while she practiced the piano, but she actually turned on the microwave and it caught on fire?  Remember that?  It was Elder Johnson that told that story about his daughter.  I guess that is just a bit of trivia.  He and Sister Johnson taught the whole mission each morning.  We were there in person on Tuesday and on Zoom the other days.  They taught us how to be better missionaries, how to teach with the spirit, how to come closer to our Savior, and how stay on the covenant path.  Tuesday afternoon was our Zone Conference.  The young Sisters and Elders are completely amazing.  We learn from them, laugh with them, and hopefully build them up as they work so hard finding friends to teach.

One of the new things we are doing is teaching the Book of Mormon each Thursday evening in our branch.  We are excited.  We were praying that we would have two or three people come.  We actually had 10 of us.  4 were missionaries, 1 was a friend,  and 5 members of our branch were there.  We showed a short video of President Nelson teaching about the title page.  Did you know that the people who translated the Bible (50 people) took 7 years to translate the King James Version.  They were translating about 1 page a day.  In this modern time, the church uses translators who have every modern machine (Lexicon, computers, spell checker, online dictionaries, etc) possible to translate and they are translating about 1 page a day.  Joseph Smith, a young man with a 3rd grade education, translated about 7-8 pages a day over the course of almost 3 months.  President Nelson said we can hardly read it in 3 months.  It is such a testimony to us that the Book of Mormon is truly the word of God, brought to the earth through the help of angels.  We love it. Read it!

One other sacrifice we are making is taste testing all the different kinds of ice cream in this area.  It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.  We want to make sure that we know the best places to get the best ice cream so that when any of you come to visit, we can make sure to hook you up with some tasty treats.

As we were traveling through the countryside on Friday, meeting people in our branch boundaries, we came across a little Amish farm with a little stand where they sell baked goods.  We stopped to see what they were selling.  They had cookies, hand pies, pies, brownies, peanut butter bars, honey, and maple syrup.  They also sell firewood and furniture that the build.  They have beehives so they harvest their own honey and they have maple trees-thus the maple syrup.  The prices were complete ridiculous.  So cheap.  The wood was $2 for a bundle.  We bought some brownies and they were $2 for 4 big brownies.  They had hand written ingredients on the package.  We were so excited to try them.  You can see in the picture how good they look. They were okay.  We were kind of bummed because they weren't to die for.  (But with the lard in them maybe we could die from them! :) What a way to go.

 Friday was a good finding day.  I love when the spirit whispers simple little things.  We were visiting a grandma and a couple of her grandkids.   She was so sweet but so overwhelmed with the choices her children were making and how it effects the grandkids.  These two kids, a girl around 14 and a boy around 11 were showing off for us and she sent them inside.  They came back out and were just sitting under the tree and I had this idea flit through my head.  I had a package of chocolate chip cookies in the car that we weren't going to bring with us but I grabbed just as we walked out the door.  I asked the grandma if the kids could have cookies and she said yes.  I went to the car and grabbed the cookies and handed them to the kids.  They were so excited.  As we drove away, the girl came out of the house, eating a cookie and just waved and waved to us.  I love the simple way the spirit works.

I was sustained as the 1st counselor in the YW today and then I had the chance to teach YW.  It's hard here.  We had two girls in class today and one was a visitor.  They did respond some but they kept looking at each other like they wanted to laugh as I taught.  My biggest job will be to help find the girls who don't come and invite them and try to build these girls up.  We are keeping busy.  We are figuring it all out!  We are happy to wear the Savior's name on our name tags. Life is good here in New York.  Have a wonderful week! #GoTeamJesus